Google, like arch-rival Apple, has been in bed with automakers for a while. A year ago, it announced that it is partnering with Audi to build an Android-based dashboard information and entertainment system. Six months earlier, Apple had announced that it was working with GM, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Honda on an iOS-based dashboard system. For these systems to work, the user needs to plug in a smartphone.

But Google’s next-generation operating system, Android M, will run on the car’s processors and go far beyond the dashboard systems, Reuters reported. It would be connected to the Internet at all times. It wouldn’t require a smartphone. It would be sold as part of the car and run the entertainment and navigation features. It would give Google unrestricted access to the car’s cameras, GPS location, sensors, fuel gage, speedometer…. Are you speeding again in that 25-mph zone?

It would know where you go, where you stop, where you buy gas, where you pick up people, and who you pick up (their smartphones are all traveling together). It would include vehicle-to-vehicle communication whether you want it or not. It would give Google real-time access to just about every bit of data a car and its numerous sensors generate – the mother lode in the information age.

The opportunities to serve ads and direct drivers to those advertisers would be endless. Google, and not the automakers, would monetize the automobile. It would thrust itself between the driver and the car.

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